Desiree, you little fool

The finale speaks, perhaps, to a fundamental flaw of human nature. That we can’t resist what we can’t have. For those of you who don’t keep up with mindless reality TV, the bachelorette, Desiree, was left with 3 final contenders, two of whom were in love with her, and quite expressive about it. The third was more reticent. So reticent, in fact, that he ended up dumping her. Yes, this one: Brooks.

Okay, so what is it about him? He doesn’t seem to be familiar with razors. Fine, he has a perfect curl, but his hair is too long. He often implied he desperately wanted to feel love, but didn’t once say that he loved her. In fact, he found her feelings for him surprising. Surprising the way an academic might find a falsified result surprising. He made no indication that he could see them together in the future, or even that he would want such a thing. I can’t blame him — he didn’t let his emotions get the better of him, but instead carefully considered whether he would realistically ever feel strongly enough about her to marry her. He concluded he wouldn’t, so he left. In response to this, Des cried her heart out and made even more intense revelations about her own feelings towards him. Apparently she hasn’t read Wilde:

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

On the other hand, this is Drew.

As if it isn’t enough to love him because he is beautiful*, she felt something was missing. Even though he was ostensibly everything on her list of desirable traits, and he seemed to truly love her. More than that, he behaved with the utmost grace, even when being dumped. Instead of making any attempt to change her mind or fight for himself, he said merely that he would want someone who felt the same for him, that he understood, and that he hoped she would find her happiness.

This brings up a more general question: why do people find uncertainty so compelling? Maybe not everyone. Dreamers. The road to becoming a reasonable person must be to stop dreaming about real people, and instead, pay attention to the way they act and the things they don’t say, then to rein in one’s own feelings accordingly. It was always clear the Brooks did not feel as much for her as she felt for him. It may even have been the irrational trajectory of her own feelings for him that killed his developing ones. Maybe we can all be saved with just a bit of temperance. Those of us who aren’t masochists, anyway.